Monthly Archives: August 2013

When writing a book, or working on any other creative endeavor, even the best of us get stuck sometimes. The inspiration dissipates, and the project gathers dust on the back burner of the mind.

Recently I’ve stalled in my progress on the novel I’ve been writing since January, tentatively titled the Map of Daggers. I have 56,000 words written, and I’m happy with what I have, but I haven’t written anything new in weeks. Part of the problem was disruption in my personal life, as I recently moved out of my parents’ house to my own apartment in a new city. Most of my free time before and after the move was dedicated to packing, unpacking, shopping, organizing, etc. I also had to get settled into a new daily routine, and somehow my daily writing simply got left out of the equation. Since I didn’t schedule a specific block of time for it, it never got done.

The other part of the problem, though, is that I’m not sure where to take the story next. The scene where I left off is a stand-off between the protagonists and antagonists, but it is far from the end of the novel. I have to find some way to defuse the situation while retaining the tension and setting up for the final conflict to come. There are several potential ways for this to happen, and I can’t quite decide which is best.

Whether dealing with changes in your personal life, or stubborn plot issues, getting back to the novel and finishing what you started is one of the hardest things to do after a long absence. But I have a few strategies that could help, and I hope that writing them down will also force me to start writing again:

1. Put writing back on your schedule. In your calendar or daily planner, block out a period of time that will be devoted to writing. Even if you’re not motivated or “in the mood” for writing, you will sit in front of your computer or notepad at that time and give it a try. Write something, anything, if you can, even if you throw it away afterwards. Just the act of writing can be enough to get the juices flowing. This will only happen if you schedule it, because there are plenty of other demands on our time in a given day.

2. Skim through what you have already written. Don’t focus on individual words. Just scroll through the document or flip through the pages. Look how much you’ve already written! All of these words are words that you, and you alone, put together on the page to create a unique story. Feel pride in your accomplishment up to this point. But do not start examining individual words, because if you’re like me, you will immediately start fretting that you’ve chosen the wrong words, and you will soon lose your self-confidence. Remember, it’s not going to be perfect, and in fact it will need a lot of revision in the future, but as you’re easing back in, the key is not to get overwhelmed by the amount of work ahead of you.

3. Revisit your outline. Look over your initial outline and reflect on which plot points have been written and which are yet to come. Have you strayed from the original path? Has your time away from the novel changed your idea of how you want the story to end? Now is also a good time to go back through what you’ve already written, more slowly, to refresh your memory on the major scenes and plot points. Have you missed anything so far? It also helps to see the desired conclusion still hovering on the horizon, tantalizing you and begging to be written. Even if the middle part of the story is getting slow, focusing on the interesting plot points to come could be enough to get your brain churning and your fingers typing again.

4. If you don’t know how to finish a scene, then write several endings. Let each one play out. Which one leads you closer to the ending of the novel that you have in mind? Which one better reflects and strengthens the main theme?

5. Reward yourself. Getting back into the swing of writing a novel, or working on any major project, is very difficult, which is why far more novels are started than ever finished. If you can succeed at starting again, then you owe yourself a big Congratulations. Set a reward for yourself for getting unstuck. For example, if I sit down and write a page today, I will have a bowl of ice cream, or watch my favorite show on Netflix. Or both! There are also motivational apps, such as Carrot, which allow users to set specific goals and rewards for themselves, though I haven’t tried any of them yet so I can’t vouch for them.

Good luck all of your fellow stuck writers! My plan is to unstick myself and write from 8-9 tonight, and my reward is a new episode of Breaking Bad.

Today we look at Neverland, as depicted by Disney for the 1953 film adaptation of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. This is the best official map I could find, and apparently it was a limited edition item; it could only be obtained by mailing in three soap wrappers (Colgate-Palmolive’s “Peter Pan Beauty Bar with Chlorophyll”) and 15 cents.

Map of Neverland, by Walt Disney Productions, copyright 1953.

Neverland is a fantastically intriguing place for any child or adult who longs for the carefree days of youth. It’s a small island in an ambiguous part of the ocean, and you can only find it by flying, picking the second star to the right and going straight on til morning, whatever that means. In Neverland, a child’s imagination becomes reality, with pirates and fairies and mermaids galore. Neverland is warm and tropical, but it symbolizes a world of danger and adventure more than leisure. The kid in us is intoxicated by Neverland; the adult in us would probably prefer Tahiti.

The map above effectively conveys the sense of mystery and escapism of Neverland, enticing the reader to live vicariously through Peter Pan and the Lost Boys. The panels around the border of the map also detail the main plot points of the movie, so the reader can keep them in mind when surveying the relevant locations on the island. I think the map has the general feel of an old treasure map, with the antique typeface of the text and the stylistic touches such as pirate ships off the coast.

However, I also have a few criticisms of this map. The highly stylized text, and overuse of shading in some areas, makes it hard to actually read some of the names of locations. Additionally, it does not seem that the scenes depicted around the border of the map match the numbers written on the map. While I do see the numbers 1-12 randomly floating out in the ocean, it is not clear whether they actually correspond to anything. If the mapmaker had coordinated this better, it could have made the Peter Pan fan very happy to be able to trace the major events of the film on the map by following the numbers. Last, but not least, there is an actual point on the map labeled “Peter’s Secret Hideout.” Well, it was secret.

Generally, though, it is a pretty good map which succeeds in depicting Neverland relatively accurately while awakening the imaginations of the reader. Now if only we could get a higher resolution version without having to send in three soap wrappers.

That’s all for today! Happy Mapping, and please follow me on Twitter @PetrosJordan.

For an online mapping and geospatial technology course, I created a map showing the location of the most popular pizza places in New Haven. I used a website called ArcGIS, which allows you to create and collaborate on interactive maps. It can be accessed at the following link: http://bit.ly/14sqfyS.

Here is what it looks like:

My map of New Haven pizza places

When you go to the site, you can click on points and it will bring up information about each place. You can also add your own points on the map. If there’s a pizza place I left out, click “edit” at the top, then “stockpoint” or any other symbol on the left side, and then click on a point on the map to add it. You can then add information about the place. Once you add your own places to the map, you can save it and share it at the top, which lets other people visit your map if you give them the link. Pretty cool, huh?

As for the map itself, I was inspired to create it since I recently moved to the fine city of New Haven and have been sampling its wonderful pizza options. New Haven style pizza is called “apizza”, and it is baked in a brick oven with a very thin crust. Frank Pepe Pizzeria was the first to use this style in 1925, and many people say that it’s still the best pizza in the city, but lots of newer places compete with them for that title. My personal favorite is Modern Apizza, but I have yet to try many of these places. One interesting thing to note is that most of these places are relatively close to Yale’s campus, further cementing the old cliché of the undying love between a college student and a hot, delicious pizza.

Once upon a time, in the 15th and 16th centuries, there was a dragon. Or at least the tail of one. In world maps produced during the early era of the Age of Discovery, Southeast Asia was depicted as a long, peninsula dragon’s tail jutting southwest into the Indian Ocean toward Africa. As with most geographic inaccuracies of the time, it continued to be reproduced this way despite lack of actual evidence for such a shape or size, until navigators finally charted the area and realized that it did not resemble any appendage of a dragon.

Here is one example:

Map of the world by Henricus Martellus Germanus, circa 1489, with prominent “dragon’s tail” in the southeast corner (via wikipedia)

This map of the world was made by German cartographer Henricus Martellus Germanus, or Martellus for short, in 1489 or 1490, just before America was discovered by Europeans. The feature that stands out the most is the southern end of Africa, which had been circumnavigated by Portuguese explorers in the previous decades. Still figuring out exactly how to fit this revised shape of Africa into the map, Martellus chose to let the Cape of Good Hope actually cut into the border of the map itself. Now look across the sea, on the other side of the banner for the Indian Ocean, and there’s a long, crooked peninsula descending from China: The Dragon’s Tail.

Where did the Dragon’s Tail come from? Well, before the 15th century, many cartographers, going back to Ptolemy in the second century AD, guessed that Africa in fact curved all the way across the Indian Ocean to the Southeast tip of Asia, forming a vast inland sea. Below is one example of the supposed land bridge between Southern Africa and Southeast Asia, from a reproduction of Ptolemy’s world map in the 15th century.

15th-century reproduction of Ptolemy’s world map from his Geographia, showing the closed-off Indian Ocean (via wikipedia).

Once explorers determined that Africa was in fact surrounded by ocean in the South and East, they cut off the land bridge but kept the part of it jutting off from Asia, like the vestigial tail of a dragon. It came to be known as the “dragon’s tail”, and it remained that way on maps for decades, until explorers finally found their way there and learned the true shape of the land.

Here is how Southeast Asia looks in real life, a bit far removed from the imagined dragon’s tail:

Rather than curving westerward like the dragon’s tail, the southernmost peninsula (where Thailand and Malaysia are) actually curves to the east. Meanwhile, the sizable islands of Java, Sumatra, and Borneo were missing completely from Martellus map, even though Marco Polo had mentioned some of the locations on these islands in his travelogue from the 13th century. In the early decades of the 16th century, though, this area of the map was more accurately charted thanks to expeditions by Magellan and others, and the fictitious dragon’s tail was finally laid to rest.

For more information on this, check out “Early Mapping of Southeast Asia: The Epic Story of Seafarers, Adventurers, and Cartographers Who First Mapped the Regions Between China and India”, by Thomas Suarez, published in 1999 by Tuttle Publishing.

My good friend Ben Lee will soon be embarking on a very ambitious trip: traveling across the United States on a motorcycle, and visiting all 59 national parks in the process. I am proud of him for taking on this difficult goal, which will be a wonderful opportunity for great personal growth. The journey will include crossing the continental United States three times, driving through Canada to reach Alaska, and even flying to Hawaii, all while carrying only the possessions that will fit on a motorcycle.

Below is the wall map he created which shows his anticipated routes between each national park:

Ben Lee’s route across the US to visit all 59 national parks (via 59parks.com)

His travel plan will consist of three legs, which are represented on the map as red, blue, and green.

Following the red route, he begins in Boston, goes North to visit Acadia National Park in Maine, and then travels generally West across the central part of the country. After driving South through California, he flies to Hawaii, and then returns to Southern California for the blue leg. This route takes him throughout the Southwest, then down into Texas, East across the Southern United States into Florida, and back up the East Coast again to New York. Finally, the green leg takes him West across the Northernmost reaches of the United States, from Washington State up into Canada, and finally ending with the parks in Alaska.

Ben is beginning this adventure on August 24, 2013, and he is expecting that it will take him a year or two to complete. He will be blogging when he has internet access, and you can track his progress, and find out more about his reasons behind this journey, at his website: www.59parks.com.

The following Youtube clip shows a map of the world through time, from 3000 BC to 2013 AD. Watch empires, kingdoms, and nations rise, fall, split apart, and combine. It’s pretty interesting, but the areas are not labeled, so it helps to have some background knowledge of what’s going on.

My favorite parts: The rise of the Roman Empire from 100BC to 0, the massive spread of the Mongol Empire in the 1200s AD, and the expansion of Russia to the East in the 1600s. It is also fascinating to see so many new nations arise, particularly in Africa, in the second half of the 20th century during decolonization. What other interesting periods in history jump out at you?

Of course, the mere change in political boundaries doesn’t always tell the full story. In particular, the spread of an empire over a vast blank territory, such as the British and then the Americans over the North American continent, was very different in reality. All the “blank” territory was in fact inhabited by millions of Native Americans, who found their land gradually gobbled up by what would become the United States. So it is worth remembering that this video is focusing mainly on the big and powerful political players in history, leaving many smaller tribes and states off the map. It would be nice to find a video which also shows, for example, the Sioux and the Cherokee and the Inuit, but perhaps the historical record before the arrival of the Europeans was not as robust.

There’s a fascinating collection of unrealized city plans at Wired’s MapLab today. It’s a startling look into what some of the most iconic cities of today, such as New York and Washington, DC, could have looked like, had certain city planners had their way. In some cases, economic and political conditions prevented the change. For example, the expansive and intimidating “Welthauptstadt Germania” plan for Berlin, planned by the Nazis to be ready for the 1950 World’s Fair, never became reality due to the Nazis’ defeat at the end of World War II.

But the 1966 Plan for Lower Manhattan was much more grounded in reality, while still creative and ambitious. It was intended to complement the soon-to-be-built World Trade Center towers, forming the backdrop for a cutting-edge, mixed use neighborhood along the East River. Sadly, when the towers opened in the 1970s, the city was experiencing an economic decline, and the plan was scrapped.

To a non-New Yorker like me, the plan generally resembles the Lower Manhattan of reality. We can see the familiar landmarks of the area, such as the Brooklyn Bridge in the top right, Battery Park at the bottom, and Wall Street as the first main horizontal street from the bottom. But look closer and there are some key differences, and I’m sure New Yorkers will notice more. In this plan, for example, there is much greater development along the East River, made possible by the addition of landfill. There was also a plan to add underground highways, solving the age-old problem of traffic in the New York City streets.

Below is a map of present-day lower Manhattan, for the sake of comparison:

It’s not too far off from the plan, except for the shape of some streets, the lack of landfill developments along the East River, and, of course, the tragic loss of the World Trade Center towers. One also notices the lack of green compared to the city map in the plan, and I hope that city planners keep in mind the need for parks and public spaces when considering ways to improve this mostly-concrete jungle in the future.